02-25-2013, 10:07 PM
Quote:..............
Alternatively, were there other tactical uses for the heavily armoured cavalryman? If at least some were armed with the bow, were they perhaps intended as mobile archers, perhaps operating at close range and relatively invulnerable to return fire? Or were the bows intended to be used against infantry to open up breaches in the line before charging?..........
I do not believe it is wrong to begin an analysis from first principles - nor indeed to seek a root cause.
The purpose of armour is reasonably self-explanatory - for protection either for just the rider, or possibly the horse. At a distance even modest armour (including quilted) can stop many light arrows from generally weak bows. Armour is also extremely useful in close quarters, but it should be noted that fully armouring a horse is a practical impossibility and thus a horseman can be increasingly vulnerable if slowed down, and particularly so if stopped. Most cavalrymen have been taught that being stopped means being dead and they normally care for their horses to some extent.
Armour has a downside, generally, in that it is heavy. Whilst horses can come in many shapes and sizes, the development of the larger varieties took many centuries and there was therefore a practical limit to the amount of armour that could be carried in our period, without severe detriment to a cavalryman's speed and manoeuverability.
So, to give one answer to your question, why arm a, possibly, heavily armoured cavalryman with a bow? For one, it allows him to shoot arrows from outside the range of javelins that could otherwise severely injure of kill even through armour, whilst being relatively protected from incoming arrow fire. At the same time he is fairly close to the action and could then exploit any form of opening fairly quickly.
Imagine, if you will, the classic Parthian cavalry mix of roughly 90% light horse archers and 10% 'cataphracts'. This can work extremely well if the enemy have few cavalry and few, if any, archers (I'm obviously thinking Xenophon & Crassus here). The HA can ride around with relative impunity causing minor damage, annoying wounds, tiredness, a lowering of morale and hopefully the break up of any formation - which the cataphracts can then exploit.
However, if the enemy can deploy more cavalry and more infantry archers, the HA can be kept more at bay; hence the likely introduction of a mix of an armoured cavalryman and a horse archer. He won't be as good as a more specialised soldier in his particular speciality, but can be good for both to a lesser, but perhaps not too much, extent.
Another, obvious to some, but there is the old fashioned difficulty of getting a cavalryman off his horse; however an armoured cavalryman still normally moves faster than an equivalent armoured infantryman (certainly over tactical distances) - they can certainly be used to move and hold vital ground until the mass of infantry can get there.
About the only thing that a, heavily, armoured cavalryman is not really used for and that's classic scouting. This tends to be left to the Light Cavalry specialists as they are faster and have more stamina.
M2CW
